Johnson-Jordan Dinner remarks – The Taco Truck Speech

Saturday, Sep. 17, 2016

Friends, fellow Democrats, I am glad to be with you here tonight. Looking out at all of you, I see those who represent the hard-working people of Texas. I see people who fight in the trenches for social justice, for reproductive freedoms, for workers rights, for economic equality.

So when Donald Trump accuses Democrats of being the elites, of representing wealthy insiders. I can’t imagine what he’s talking about.

Please excuse what I’m wearing. I’m not trying to put on airs (or do a parody of my now friend Mike Martinez’s campaign video). The thing is, I just came from a function for the ballet. This, obviously, is why I’m wearing a tux. I mean, It’s after six. I’m not a farmer.[1]

But seriously, the issues facing this country could not be more important, the situation could not be more dire. You are in the trenches and you deserve great oration. You deserve the likes of Churchill, Ecclesiastes, Lincoln, Grapes of Wrath, Pericle’s Funeral Oration, Hebrews, and, of course, St. Crispin’s Day Speech… and even 30 Rock…

But today, I speak from the heart. I want to put things plainly and simply. This is no time for to be dramatic. It’s important for me to put this in my own words.

Friends, every public servant must at one time be called to speak in praise of those who should require none, to hold aloft exemplary citizens whose deeds should raise them far above the power of any Mayor – no matter how well-dressed – to celebrate, honor, or laud. This is such a time.[2]

In this time of discord, of division, of sharp words and harsh sentiments exchanged at the highest levels of our discourse, it is in the small, day-to-day acts of community that we find our heroes, indeed, that we find ourselves.

Scripture tells us that bread is not always to the wise, and alas it is so. I come today to speak in praise of good and decent people whose noble pursuits have won them not the universal praise that is their due but the disdain, disrespect, and distrust of a Republican campaign and political party that at long last seem unable to tell good from bad or wisdom from foolishness.[3]

Friends, by now you will know who I have come to praise to the very limits of my mortal means. Let us here give due thanks and honor…

…to our taco trucks.

It seems incredible to me, but there are people in this country who dread the sight of these noble creations on every corner, people unable to recognize that vision for the earthly paradise it represents. But we in this room know better.

We in this room know taco trucks for what they are: the very ambassadors of community, of justice, and of guacamole – truly all that makes life worth living, the very bedrocks of our democracy, and of our breakfast.

And so I enjoin you friends to stand with me, to tell the enemies of taco trucks that we will fight them on the street corners. We will fight them in the parks. We will fight them with tortillas, cheese, and chorizo. We will fight them with growing confidence at breakfast and at lunch, and most of all, after closing time.

And when it is over, we shall say, never before have so many eaten so well so often.[5]

This election, already ugly, may yet get worse. There seems no low to which our opponents will stoop. It is possible they may yet slander the noble enchilada. And that is why we in this room must commit ourselves to their defeat, to our victory, and to the promise that a nation of the taco, by the taco, for the taco shall not perish from the earth[6].

We are reminded daily that the tortillas are not always to the swift, nor the cheese to the strong, nor refried beans to the wise, nor guacamole to people of understanding, nor sour cream to people of skill. Yet this enlarges rather than defrays the hope that we confess[7].

This is, after all, Austin. We are first in war, first in peace, first in line for breakfast tacos.[8]

Maybe it’s like Hillary Clinton says. We’re stronger together.

This is why it matters that we are all here in this room together today. Wherever you can look, wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat tacos, we’ll be there. Wherever there’s a guy who needs a taco, we’ll be there. We’ll be there in the way guys yell when they can’t find a taco truck. We’ll be there in the way kids laugh when they want a taco and they know the taco truck’s comin’, and when there are people eatin’ the tacos and livin’ near the corners where the taco trucks are — we’ll be there, too.[9]

If anyone has no stomach for this taco, let him depart now. We would not eat tacos in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to eat tacos with us.

[3] Ecclesiastes 9:11 “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. “